Poetry

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.

— Naomi Shihab Nye · Kindness

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

— Edna St. Vincent Millay · What Lips My Lips Have Kissed

We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

— Theodore Roethke · The Waking

I That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song,

— William Butler Yeats · Sailing To Byzantium

I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane.

— Robert Frost · Acquainted with the Night

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables Said if I could get down 13 turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted.

— Andrea Gibson · The Nutritionist

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

— Robert Frost · Stopping by Woods on a Snowy…

Who is Jeremy Lord? There are degrees of madness. And the matter you are, the more obvious it will be to other

— Charles Bukowski · My Madness

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense. Lay your shadow upon the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go free. Command the last fruits to be full;

— Rainer Maria Rilke · Autumn Day

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.

— Robert Frost · Fire and Ice

We cannot fathom his mysterious head, Through the veiled eyes no flickering ray is sent: But from his torso gleaming light is shed As from a candelabrum; inward bent

— Rainer Maria Rilke · Archaic Torso of Apollo

How shall I hold my soul, so that it does not touch on yours? How shall I lift it beyond you to other things? Ah, gladly would I house it with something

— Rainer Maria Rilke · Love Song

Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much, the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood. We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways, but you still have to call it a birthday.

— Andrea Gibson · Birthday

It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette someone left burning on a baby grand piano around three o’clock in the morning; smoke that billows up into the bright lights

— Billy Collins · Nightclub

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;

— Rudyard Kipling · If

Here is a story to break your heart. Are you willing?

— Mary Oliver · Lead

I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive.

— Billy Collins · Introduction To Poetry

What’s madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire\! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.

— Theodore Roethke · In a Dark Time

Bring the Symphony Orchestra there is a thunderstorm you're playing a Wagner overture and the people leave their seats under the trees and run inside to

— Charles Bukowski · Rain